Going Walkies On A Forest Trail

The wind was deafening as it rushed by Gray’s ears and ripped at his coat. Even his Aura couldn’t block out the roaring sound that filled up part of his world. The other part was the great expanse of blue that went on forever.

Until he looked down.

The Emerald forest blanketed the land north and east of Beacon. The land was thick with trees all the way to the foot of the mountains. Some trees even made their way up the slight inclines before giving ground to the naked giants.

Gray’s eyes scanned the deep green forest for signs of any temples or ruins. There were a number of small clearings and long swathes of land not covered by trees. The nearest ones didn’t offer anything obvious to Gray, however.

Looking further afield he noticed something poking out of the tree line. Something that could be man-made. Or a big rock. One or the other. And once he had seen that, other things captured Gray’s eyes. Odd formations dotted the forest. Almost hidden by vegetation and foliage but he managed to make them out with this near bird's eye view.

Gray could feel the momentum of his ascent start to peter out. His arc coming to a peak. Just as he began to stop climbing in altitude, and before he began to fall, Gray took Obscurity in hand. Its length extended to its full form. Aiming one end of it at an angle behind him he then pulled the trigger that would ignite the wind dust in its chamber.

Gray held tight as a blast of dust-fueled air burst from the end pointed behind him. Green wisps of wind Dust were blown away as he extended the peak of his arc of ascent by many meters. Only then did he begin to fall.

Angling his body just so, Gray pointed the end of his staff at a slight angle away from himself and let loose another shockwave. Now, his body was aimed at one of these odd formations in the forest like a bullet. He let himself freefall from there.

His stomach was rioting against gravity, but he couldn’t help but revel in the thrill of diving to the ground. Instincts screamed at him, warning of impending ****, even though in his mind he was confident. The mixture of fear and excitement tore through him with an adrenaline rush that he hadn’t experienced before in his life.

He dared to look back, trying to find the other students. Across the backdrop of the forest, he managed to see a number of flashes from gunfire. They were all spread out and far from him, though. He gave up searching and paid attention to his own situation.

Gray smiled, the wind doing little to affect his face as he had his Aura sharpened in front of him. He was literally cutting through the air. Which, incidentally, made his approach to Remnant much faster.

The ground sped towards him in what should have been an alarming rate. Any concern that Gray felt was pushed to the side in favour of whooping with joy. He couldn’t hear himself though, on account of the wind being so loud.

When the time came to focus Gray spread his arms and legs wide. Though he had aimed for a certain point of the forest he knew that he wasn’t likely to land on the exact spot. He was just shy of his intended location but he began his landing strategy. So what if he had to walk a little bit?

With his limbs spread his descent began to slow down. Not only did he use his arms and legs to increase his drag, Gray also flared his Aura to take it further.

He let himself fall for a few moments more while scanning the ground beneath him. Once he had found what he wanted he tried spinning until he was facing the ground feet first and aimed his staff down and a little behind him. With a wind blast from the tip, he propelled himself towards his target. A little closer and he blasted straight down, slowing his fall significantly.

He only needed one more blast of air and he was falling at a speed he was comfortable with. He put away Obscurity and pulled out Haze and Murk, his twin daggers. Finally, Gray made contact with a big tree he had his eyes on. With a slam he penetrated the trunk with his daggers and held on tight as gravity and momentum had him slicing his way down the bark, leaving behind two deep gouges.

Even as he dragged his way down the trunk his Aura was trying to get purchase on the tree. They were his second set of arms searching for any handholds.

Eventually he came to a stop. Three meters above the forest floor.

A moment passed by with him hanging there. All the auditory stimulation he received before was gone in an instant.

Gray looked around, not seeing any threats. Although, under the foliage the lighting was much dimmer. He needed a moment to let his eyes adjust, but didn’t dare to just stay hanging in the open. Noticing some bushes at the base of his tree, Gray detached from the trunk and landed at the bottom. He immediately took cover, crouching by the bushes and activating his Semblance. For good measure he also used his Aura camouflage skill at the same time.

Silence reigned.

The forest dampened all noises besides some distant gunshots.

Gray looked around, eyeing every potential threat. He put his daggers back in their sheaths, pressed a button on each that turned them into Mist and Wisp. Combined daggers and sheaths came away from his thighs and mecha-shifted, two silenced pistols now at the ready.

Gray breathed slowly, letting his adrenaline seep out of him and letting his heart rate decrease back to normal levels. The blood rushing in his ears made it seem like the silence was so deafening that it was ringing.

A moment that seemed to go on forever finally ended when Gray felt confident that there were no enemies nearby. He heard no footfalls or any breathing besides his own. He took a deep breath and stood up.

Feeling somewhat safe Gray put Mist away and pulled out his scroll. He navigated to his map application and opened a compass plugin. He let the sonar ping a few times and read over the data. A new map of his location began to fill up the screen.

Gray fixed the scroll to his forearm so he could have both hands free for combat. He tapped the screen to set the sonar on auto. It would now ping once every fifteen seconds and update his map. Thinking for a moment Gray decided to toggle the function that would allow him to discover electronic anomalies. This way he would be able to tell if other people, with scrolls or other devices, were nearby.

Also, this would let Gray decide to join up with someone or move on without them knowing he was even there.

He picked a direction, that he believed would lead him to the odd formation that he had seen, and began walking. Gun in one hand and occasionally glancing at his scroll he made his way through the forest.

As he walked, Gray mused to himself. As much as he enjoyed being with his friends, Gray definitely wanted to try and end up on a team with some girls. Preferably with the girls here that he had already become acquainted with. Jeanne or Ruby would be optimal. Yang or Pyrrha would be acceptable. Weiss... Not so much.

If it were anyone else, some girl he never met before, then he would have to spend time getting to know them. Gray felt more comfortable if he was paired with someone he knew. Just not a guy.

Besides, his friends would most likely become a team anyway. They had an advantage that the other students likely didn’t have. Gray and his friends all owned these small hand-held homing beacons. Used for the express purpose of finding each other if any of them got lost in a place like a forest. He could have turned his on right then and there. He would find the others or they would find him, but since teams would consist of four people, one of them would just be a fifth wheel. So, Gray voted himself out of the group.

For a moment, as he was keeping his eyes peeled for Grimm, Gray imagined what it would be like being in a team with three girls. Would he sleep in the same dorm as them? Or would they be split up? Were the dorms built to accommodate teams with mixed genders?

Of course, none of that would matter if his Semblance worked the way he thought it did. If they were bothered sleeping in the same room as him, he could just tell them not to be and it would work. Hopefully.

But that’s putting the cart before the horse. Gray had to pass this initiation first before doing anything about his dorm situation. Clearing his head, he focused on the task at hand. Find some temple with some kind of relic and find a partner along the way.

Easy.

Gray stepped out into a small, partially uncovered field. The surrounding trees stretched out up over the area to cover much of the place in dappled shadow. In the middle was a break in the foliage that allowed sunlight to filter through almost blindingly.

That sunlight bathed a strange rock outcropping in the center of the clearing. Now, if a skeptical person were to look at this, they would probably just say that it was an oddly shaped rock that had crumbled in a particular way due to weathering.

A more fanciful person could imagine that the collapsed rock was once a large tower. If they squinted.

A skeptical person would think that the trench-like holes in the ground immediately around the rock were simply made by animals burrowing into the ground.

An imaginative person might notice a great deal of stone blocks with sharp ninety-degree edges half buried in the ground and think that they might have been foundations for other buildings.

Gray was speculative at best, considering that there was a more immediate concern that drew his eyes. Two large dark shapes were shuffling around the old crumbled rock, snouts snuffling at the ground.

Beowolves.

Gray crouched by the tree line and watched for a moment. The Grimm didn’t look to be that old. They were rather small and didn’t seem to have grown any bone-white armor yet. They would be easy to pick off.

Gray made certain they were the only two before sneaking his way forward. He kept his emotions as still as the surface of a pond while keeping his Aura skill and Semblance active. He kept to the shadows, going where the dappled shade from the tree's above were the densest. He was silent as he flew across the ground, making sure not to step on any twigs or dead leaves.

He made it to the edge of one of the trenches and lowered himself down to make himself a small target. He did this because one of the beowolves almost turned his way. He kept very still and hardly breathed, the trench giving him a little bit of cover. He banked on his Aura camouflage skill to do the rest.

A couple moments later it had turned away to sniff at the base of the large rock. Gray took the opportunity and stalked his way closer. He got close enough that he could make out the black mist that all Creatures of Grimm radiated as if they were recently burning. The mist floated lazily away from their unnatural dark forms. Their lanky wolf like appearances, a mockery of the noble wolf, continued to search aimlessly for some sign of mankind to destroy.

That was their nature. To oppose humanity. To kill and tear down anything to do with humans, Faunus and civilization. Which was probably why they were hanging around this forest full of ruins. Leftovers of a bygone kingdom.

Now, they just circled Vale looking for gaps and weak spots while scratching away at what they had already destroyed.

Gray had managed to get close to the one nearest the crumbled rock, pulled out Haze, his dagger on his left, and moved in fast ducking underneath a lanky arm before the beowolf had time to register his presence. With a wide upward swing Gray decapitated the head. With a spin and a side step he ducked under the other arm, just as it was beginning to evaporate, took aim at the other beowolf several meters away and fired two rounds into its head.

Two rounds were enough for a weak Grimm of that size and age as it too began to evaporate into thin air. The black mist that made up its body no longer holding it together and both monsters were no more. They just ceased to exist. Nothing was left behind. No carcass, no fur, no blood. Just footprints.

Gray crouched back against the rock and waited to see if any other threats would emerge, only to relax when nothing happened. He let out a breath and put Haze away. It really had just been the two Grimm.

It was a little disappointing for Gray. He was somewhat looking forward to letting loose a little. Sighing, he turned around to examine the area. The place really did look like it might have been man-made. Nature, however, blurred the lines a little. He could have easily imagined this place being some sort of lookout station of the old kingdom. Maybe a hunting lodge. Who knows, maybe this whole area was once farmland a thousand years ago and this was the remnants of a small farmstead.

Nature had a way of retaking things that men had once carved out for themselves. Time had a way of making men forget they had ever made something there to begin with.

That was a quote Gray had learned in class one day. Looking at this clearing really reminded him of those words.

With that final thought he moved on.

Gray came across a couple weird anomalies over the course of the next half hour. One looked like a portion of a brick or cobblestone wall poking out of the ground, partially covered by dirt and a bush. The second could have once been a statue half buried and at a weird angle, the face of which was three times the size of Gray’s own head.

Or it was just an odd knobbly rock.

Gray made a note of each location on his map. In case he ever decided to come back and investigate.

None of these were a temple though. He hadn’t found a single thing that could be perceived as a relic either. And he still hadn’t met a single soul since this whole thing started. He was starting to think he was the only one in the whole world, but of course that was an illusion made by the dense forest around him. A forest had a knack for absorbing sounds and making everything oddly quiet.

Gray took a short break from walking to check his map. He observed the pins of interest that he had placed for each location that seemed man-made and wondered if perhaps he was going a little off course. Ozpin did say to head to the northern end of the forest, and looking at the places he had been to, Gray came to the conclusion that he was slightly veering east.

Forests were also notorious for making people lose their sense of direction. Some explorers would even find that they had gone in circles instead of in a straight line. Gray had thought he was better than that. Playing in the woods around his home growing up probably made him feel safe and in control in such surroundings, but perhaps that had made him somewhat arrogant.

Resolving to not make that kind of mistake he decided to create a waypoint on his map. The waypoint would be visible at the edge of the screen no matter how zoomed in he was. Honestly, it was silly of him to not have done that from the moment he landed. Not every forest was like the woods back home. He hadn’t had years to explore the Emerald forest like he did with his own backyard.

With that done Gray course corrected and moved off through the trees.

The land spread out like a green quilt. A long, bumpy, rolling, green quilt. Mountains rose in the distance, the grey pillows to this forest-green bed. From his vantage point high up in a tree Gray observed and scouted out where he was meant to go.

Somewhere north of his position and before the mountains was supposed to lie a temple obvious enough to seem like a temple. Not like the speculative evidence of possible civilization that Gray had found. An actual full-on and an in-your-face temple.

The tree he was sitting in was a large one that sat on top of a relatively large hill. It didn’t seem to be tall enough for him to make out much besides more trees and hills, though. Scanning the skyline and double checking his map, he decided to aim for another high point along the way. Gray placed a pin on his map that he thought was in the vicinity of a sharp like outcropping of rock that had one tree growing on it.

With that he was ready to go.

Gray leaped off of the branch he was standing on and onto the one below then dropped to the next, and the next before hitting the ground, falling into a crouch.

As he was standing up from his crouching position a loud, bone-rattling growl had Gray ducking and rolling to the side and around the tree that he had just climbed down from. With a spin and a flourish, he had Obscurity out and extended, ready to defend himself.

Filling most of his field of vision was a large Ursa Major, bone-white armor covering about half of its solid black mass. Spikes of the same bone-white were protruding from its back and shoulders.

Somehow the large creature had snuck up on Gray while he was up in the tree. Or perhaps it was simply passing by and noticed him drop to the ground. His camouflage Aura skill was less effective the faster he moved and his Semblance didn’t seem to work on the creatures of Grimm anyway. So, it could have just been bad luck for Gray.

That still didn’t answer how such a big and boisterous Grimm moved so close to him without him noticing, though. But he didn’t have time to question that. The big guy roared and began to charge.

Before anything, Gray had the foresight to turn off his Aura skill and Semblance. The first, because he might need the extra energy for the fight, and the second, because he wanted any teachers watching to evaluate his performance.

Side-stepping past the tree, Gray leaped forward as the Grimm had to slightly change course if it didn’t want to collide with the tree. Just as it was distracted, Gray moved in close to the dark creature, ducking under an arm as wide as he was and planted one side of his staff in the ground between its feet and watched as it stumbled head first into the tree trunk.

He felt the ground vibrate with the impact as the tree creaked from the hit. It stood firm, though.

Not waiting to see how the Grimm recovered, Gray took out Murk and attached it to one side of Obscurity. Now with one pointy end, and a fresh clip of wind Dust in the quarterstaff’s chamber, Gray ignited the dust with a different function from before. Instead of a burst exploding outward, air now coalesced around the staff. Using his own Aura, he manipulated his body and weapon to move faster than it normally could.

Taking a steady stance, he thrust the sharp end of his staff into the unprotected bits of the Ursa’s back. One hit, two hits, three hits. His arm started to blur as he stabbed faster. The thing growled in pain. Like a video going in fast-forward mode Gray’s arm began to blitz faster than a regular human could.

The Ursa Major grabbed the tree trunk to right itself and swing behind itself in a **** attempt to get Gray to stop stabbing. Seeing the swinging arm coming, Gray rolled away and readied himself for its next move.

The hulking mass whipped its head around, red eyes seated deep within a bone-white skull-like face. It searched for the human that it wanted to destroy, landed on Gray and burst into action. Spring boarding off the tree, the creature of Grimm bounded after him.

When it got close Gray pointed the non-pointy end of his staff at the ground and used his wind Dust again to burst into the air, just over the monster's shoulder. With a stab of his staff into the creature's shoulder, Gray stabilized himself, pulled out Mist from his left thigh and shot four rounds into its neck.

The beast managed to take a few steps forward in its momentum before falling to all-fours roughly, coming to a halt. This managed to dislodge Gray, throwing him off its shoulder. He was flung to the ground, taking the wind out of him, but he managed to hold onto his weapons. His lungs hurt as he got to his feet.

The bear Grimm was shaking its head before locking gazes with Gray.

A moment of hateful silence ticked by.

Gray stared into its eyes and wondered how so much anger could be projected from a creature so transient that it would leave behind nothing from its passing.

A low growl rumbled through the air and Gray tensed.

With an ancient hatred that Gray couldn’t fathom, the creature of Grimm roared its resentment, dug its claws into the dirt and charged.

With a rush of air Gray flew into the sky, leaving a cloud of wind Dust behind. The bear Grimm barreled through the Dust cloud and dug in its heels trying to stop.

With a spin, Gray fixed his gun Mist to the other side of his staff, aimed himself back down towards the beast. He pointed the gun-half of his staff into the sky, ignited the Dust that he kept in the other chamber, opposite from the wind Dust. An explosion of fire, light and kinetic **** burst out from Obscurity and Mist.

With a blink of an eye Gray cut through the air faster than he had with his wind Dust. He zipped back to the ground, leaving behind a line of fire. The tip of Murk skewered through base of the Ursa’s neck. The impact **** it to collapse to the ground.

Without waiting to see if that was the killing blow, Gray pulled out his staff-turned-spear and whipped it around, slicing through its exposed neck with a clean arc.

The head thudded to the ground and a moment later the black substance that made up its body began to evaporate with a hiss.

Gray jumped down to the ground and watched the Ursa Major fade away.

He breathed deeply to settle his beating heart and to let his lungs recover. He still felt a little winded after hitting the ground earlier. He planted his staff on the ground and leaned a little on it while watching the wisps of darkness float away into nothingness.

He heard no other movement around him except the dying hiss of a creature of Grimm. Once all traces were gone Gray put Murk and Mist away and checked his ammo before moving on.